Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, aka CMAT, knows how to make an entrance - and exit. The Irish country/pop singer, described by NME as 'Dublin's answer to Dolly Parton', is having quite the moment.
This is prompted, in part, by the viral online reaction to her recent single, Take A Sexy Picture Of Me and last weekend's show-stealing, crowd-pleasing slot at Glastonbury.
Here’s everything you need to know about CMAT before her new album drops in August…
Early life and a run in with Charli XCX
Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson was born on February 23, 1996, in Dublin. She was raised in Co Meath, in Clonee and Dunboyne, one of four children. Her mother worked in care and her father in computers.
The young Ciara longed to be a musician, so started travelling to Dublin to do open mics. She joined her first band at age 17, making regular visits to London to stay with an aunt and go to indie band gigs. On leaving school, she returned to Dublin to study at Trinity College. However, this was short-lived, and she left college to move to Denmark for a few months.
She relocated to Manchester with her then-boyfriend, a musician she’d met on dating app Tinder. The pair performed together as Bad Sea, but the relationship was an unhappy one.
To make ends meet, she worked as a ‘sexy shots girl’ in bars and clubs, while partying a lot. She told The Guardian of that time, ‘I had no friends. I might have physically shared a space with people, but I don’t think I talked to anyone for two years.’
It was an encounter with dance/ pop star Charli XCX that inspired her to make changes in her life. CMAT – or just Ciara, as she was back then – was one of a handful of fans invited to an in-person listening session at a studio in London, to give feedback on unreleased Charli tracks.
Ciara was straight-talking in her responses, prompting the Brat star to call her back at the end and ask why she wasn’t making music herself. She then – and not too kindly – advised her to go and sort her life out.
Ciara broke up with her boyfriend, quit the band, moved home to Ireland and created the new-look, new-sounding CMAT.
In an interview with the Irish Examiner, CMAT spoke about the break-up of Bad Sea, saying: ‘The reason that band dissolved was because I was writing lyrics and making songs that were specific to me, and my experiences and were honest.
'The feedback that I was getting was like, “we can’t release joke music”. Like, this isn’t a comedy act. I was like, “I’m not doing comedy music, I’m writing the way I talk to people. The way I communicate is exactly the same way in speech and among friends as it is in music”.’
Moving back to Ireland
Having put her songwriting on hold for a while, CMAT took Charli XCX’s advice and on her return to Ireland was all fired up and ready to roll. The indie music-loving singer also had a soft spot for country, attracted to its melodrama and heart-on-sleeve lyrics. It appealed to the romantic in her and, influenced by the songs of Dolly Parton and Glenn Campbell, she began to release her own hook-laden country/pop music online.
In April 2020, just as the world was struggling to get used to life in lockdown, CMAT unleashed her debut single Another Day (KFC). Speaking about its inspiration, she said: ‘This song is about a breakdown that I had at a KFC a few years ago when my debit card got declined, but it’s really about getting dumped. Getting dumped is a specialist skill of mine, and I really wanted to highlight the humour and joy that can be found when people are at their most pathetic.’
With little else to do at home, CMAT continued to develop her pop persona and confidently touted herself as a ‘global pop star’, from the safety of her bedroom.
Her debut album If My Wife New I’d Be Dead, released in February 2022, produced the fan favourite single I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby, a song about feeling dissatisfied with one’s life and longing for freedom, and its follow-up, I Don’t Really Care for You, inspired by Abba and Charley Pride.
The album debuted in the Irish charts at number one and won the Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year in March 2023. In the autumn of that year, CMAT released her second studio album, Crazymad, For Me, which also debuted at number one in Ireland.
The album was later nominated for the Best Album Ivor Novello Award in May 2024, losing out to Trinidadorn, London-based musician Berwyn for his release, Who Am I.
Going viral
CMAT’s first two albums, the debut Choice Music Prize-winning If My Wife New I'd Be Dead and the Ivor Novello-nominated sophomore Crazymad, For Me, both reached number one in the album charts on home turf, where the 29-year-old had already built up a large fanbase. But outside of Ireland, CMAT was lesser known.
That is until the outspoken, unapologetic musician tackled the trolls who body-shamed her following her set at last year's BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend in Luton and inspired her to write the satirical come-back Take A Sexy Picture Of Me. The song made the top 100 of the UK singles charts, her first to do so, and reached number 22 in the Irish singles chart.
What happened next was something CMAT could never have predicted. The song's second verse, with its tongue-in-cheek take on the efforts young women will make to look sexually attractive for men, spawned a celebrity-backed TikTok dance craze, boosting CMAT's popularity massively.
When CMAT took to the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury last Friday, she did so to a vast and receptive crowd. Wearing an indigo- coloured plastic dress, matching tights, white knee boots and electric blue eyeshadow, her entrance was both dramatic and self-assured. Feigning shock at the size of the audience, she pretended to faint, falling to the floor and delivering the opener lying face down.
'I'm CMAT, I have middle child syndrome, an amazing a** and the best Irish rock and roll country band in the world!’ she announced. CMAT had arrived.
Facing trolls
That same month, the BBC was forced to disable comments on a video on its Instagram page of CMAT’s performance at the Radio 1 Big Weekend festival, following a spate of ‘fat-shaming’ comments. The video had shown the singer removing her shirt to reveal a tighter outfit beneath, prompting negative comments from trolls about her appearance and weight.
Speaking to Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, a frustrated CMAT explained: ‘I was just wearing clothes, and every - one was very annoyed at me for that. This happens to everyone all the time. Everyone is constantly being judged on whether or not they’re commercially attractive and where they fall within these really weird goal posts.
‘I just was annoyed, and I wanted to write a song about being annoyed about it.’ The resulting song was Take A Sexy Picture Of Me, the second single to be taken from her third album Euro-Country, following Running/ Planning earlier this year.
@cmatbaby It's actually quite sad so I made it very danceable 🕺🏼📸💄 #CMAT #BehindTheSong #TakeASexyPixtureOfMe #WokeMacarena #SongOfTheSummer ♬ Take A Sexy Picture Of Me - CMAT
The new album, which was recorded in New York and co-produced by CMAT and her long-time collaborator Oli Deakin, explores themes such as identity, grief and, of course, the unrealistic beauty expectations that can distort and warp the minds of young girls.
The single, which CMAT herself cites as one of her best, was one of the highlights of her Glastonbury 2025 set, as tens of thousands of fans joined in the ‘silly little dance’.
In a gesture of defiance aimed at the trolls, CMAT stripped off her plastic dress to reveal a body-skimming leotard, before turning her back on the crowd and wiggling her bum to rapturous applause.
Eurosong album
‘I’m past the point where I’m making music to express myself,’ she told Rolling Stone in a recent interview. ‘Because I’m successful, because I’m in the position where people are listening, they’re coming to my shows, and buying my albums, I had to take stock and ask myself: Now that people are listening, what exactly do I want to say? That’s what Euro-Country is.
‘I’m taking stock of what’s wrong to see if we can tear it to shreds and fix it. I know things can be better, so I write about the world in the hope that somebody out there can connect.’ Before wrapping up her slot at Worthy Farm last Friday, CMAT clambered over the security fencing and waded into the throngs for a shouty singalong of Stay For Something.
The fans went wild as she moshed up and down, before running back along the fencing and slapping the hands of those nearest the front. She then ran on to the stage, fell dramatically onto the floor again and, in trademark theatrical style, rolled over on her side to face the crowds and thank them for com - ing out in their droves.
As she and the Very Sexy CMAT Band made their way off stage, the singer took one final chance to get a message out there. ‘Free Palestine,’ she chanted, to large cheers – and then CMAT was gone.
It’s been less than four years since CMAT recorded her debut album and burst on to the music scene. Since then, the singer from Dunboyne, ‘or Dublin, depending on who you ask’, has metamorphosed from cult status to mainstream and is now well on her way to mega-stardom.
